The proliferation of very tall buildings, i.e., skyscrapers, in large cities has considerably improved the systems for their construction both in terms of efficiency and safety in recent years. The need to work safely at great heights and to continue working even with adverse meteorological conditions (wind or rain) has made it necessary to install in the periphery of the framing perimetric protections which safeguard the physical integrity of workers. The peripheral protections installed in the construction of the Espacio, Cristal and Sacyr towers (built by the Spanish company ULMA Construcción) in Madrid can be mentioned as an example.
These protections have historically been made with simple rails. However, the concept of protection that is currently used entirely covers framing, for example the last three framing structures being worked on, with canvas, wooden boards, wire mesh, etc. Said protections were first introduced on the market in non self-climbing versions, such as the protection system used by the Spanish company ULMA Construcción in the Sacyr tower works in Madrid. In this version, each set of the protection has to be hoisted with a crane and this took time away from the availability of the crane for performing other tasks on site. As can be concluded from the foregoing, it makes no sense to install a complex self-climbing system to lift the wall formworks of the central core of a building if the crane is later occupied for long periods of time to raise the perimetric protection. On the other hand, the automatic lifting is safer because it is not necessary for there to be people guiding the assemblies in dangerous working positions. To that end, there is currently a growing demand for the perimetric protections to be self-climbing, such that the can be lifted independently from the remaining work tasks.
To meet this demand, self-climbing formwork systems have been developed, such as, for example, those described in documents EP-A-1899548, EP-A-1899549 and EP-A-1902185. Nevertheless, there continues to be a need in the construction sector to be able to have alternative self-climbing perimetric protection systems with respect to those known which are reliable, easy and quick enough to handle and not excessively expensive.